Why you should turn off diary suggestions on your iPhone

As a writer, you’d think I’d love the idea of ​​a free app that invites me to reflect on my day and write down my feelings and thoughts. I just don’t feel that way about the new Diary app on my iPhone.

There’s nothing wrong with Journal – it’s a perfectly fine app. I have friends and family who use it every day. I’m just personally not interested in keeping a diary on my phone. And that should be the end of it, right? I don’t want to use an app, so no … but unfortunately, it’s not that simple.

I tried Journal once, just to see what it was all about, and then never used it again. But since I used Journal once, I inadvertently signed up for Journaling Suggestions.

Now almost every day I get suggestions from the Diary app, in the form of notifications, asking me to think about everything I’ve just done, whether it’s a doctor’s appointment, a long bike ride or a trip to the grocery store. He knows what I’m doing because I gave him access to my location, photos, contacts and more without a second thought.

The diary knows what I’m doing, where I’m going and who I’m doing it with. But since I don’t want to log anything, I’d rather the Journal not have access to that personal information. And I definitely don’t want to receive any notifications.

Fortunately, there’s an easy way to prevent Journal from ever bothering you again. I’ll show you two ways to do this: disable journaling suggestions and stop journaling notifications. Here’s what you need to know.

While you’re here, check out how to fix all the most annoying features and settings in iOS 17 and the best iPhone options in 2024.

How to prevent Logging Suggestions from accessing your data

Dnevnik sends you suggestions based on your activities, media usage, contacts, photos and notable locations. If you’re going to work, taking a photo at a restaurant, or spending some time in the park, you might get a suggestion from Journal because it kind of tracks what you’re doing.

The Diary also sends suggestions based on who’s around you, so if you’re spending time with friends or family members, the Diary can use Bluetooth to detect that and send you a notification to add them to your diary.

Aside from annoying notifications, if you don’t keep a journal, you might not like that the Journal app has access to all that data. Not only that, but this personal information can be shared with other journaling apps that use Apple’s Journaling Suggestions feature.

According to Apple, all information collected is treated in accordance with Apple’s Privacy Policy, which includes end-to-end encryption and other privacy features, but you may prefer that the Journal not have full access to your information.

To prevent the Journal from accessing your data (which would also stop notifications), go to settings > Magazine > Suggestions for journaling > Proposal privacy settings and hit Turn everything off at the top of the page. A pop-up will appear asking you to confirm that you want to turn off all journaling suggestions.

This will prevent the Journal from accessing your data and stop the app from sending you notifications.

How to stop receiving notifications about journaling suggestions

Now, if you want to use Journal and don’t mind the app having access to your data, you can still leave Journaling Suggestions on, but turn off notifications so you’re not bombarded with reminders to record your thoughts and feelings.

To go settings > Magazine > Suggestions for journaling > Suggestion notification settings and simply turn off Allow notifications.

Note: This only disables notifications, but allows Dnevnik to still have access to your data, and you’ll still see suggestions if you go into the Dnevnik app.

For more, read all new features in iOS 17.4 and 17 hidden features and settings of iOS 17.